Flavor Flav Allegedly Beat Up His Fiance and Threatened Her Teenage Son With a Knife

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LAS VEGAS (AP) — Entertainer Flavor Flav was arrested Wednesday on felony and misdemeanor charges after arguing with his fiancee and threatening to attack her teenage son with a knife, Las Vegas police said.

The 53-year-old former rapper, hip-hop and reality television star, whose legal name is William Jonathan Drayton Jr., was taken into custody about 3:30 a.m. Wednesday at a home several miles southwest of the Las Vegas Strip, Las Vegas police Officer Bill Cassell said.

Patrol officers did not report that anyone was injured.

Drayton faces a felony assault with a deadly weapon charge carrying a possible penalty of up to six years in prison and a misdemeanor battery-domestic violence charge that could get him six months in county jail, according to jail records.

He was being held on $23,000 bail at Clark County jail pending an initial court appearance on Thursday. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer.

Drayton, whose public persona includes wearing a big clock on his chest, was an original member of the politically and socially militant rap group Public Enemy in the 1980s and `90s.

In recent years he has starred in several reality TV series and lent his name and recipes to short-lived chicken and soul food restaurants in Clinton, Iowa, and Las Vegas.

He has a criminal history that includes arrests and convictions on traffic infractions, a month in jail for assaulting his then-girlfriend in 1991, and three months in prison for shooting at a neighbor in New York in 1993.

In Las Vegas, Drayton was arrested in May 2011 on outstanding unpaid traffic warrants and paid a fine. Court records show he has been ticketed eight times since August 2008 and paid almost $7,000 in fines for driving violations, including multiple instances of driving without a valid license.